Homesickness is a uniquely uneasy feeling of displacement and alienation, burdened by a nostalgic longing to return to the warm, peaceful ambience you were once secured in.
Whether you’re returning to your childhood hometown or dreaming of escape, our collection of stand-out songs about homesickness crosses the genres and eras of music, covering an array of occasions where homesick dissociation stains and warps your newly-formed reality.
Songs About Homesickness
1. Radiohead – Subterranean Homesick Alien
Appearing on Radiohead’s game-changing 1997 album OK Computer, Subterranean Homesick Alien is a quirky metaphor for alienation and isolation from the dreary society you’ve become tied to, wishing to return home to somewhere brighter, real and natural;
“The breath of the morning I keep forgetting, the smell of the warm summer air, I live in a town where you can’t smell a thing.”
The OK Computer album is a concept work centred in the isolating effect of technology and the emotional greyness of the modern age; concepts which paint a vibrant layer of meaning upon this masterfully composed indie rock track.
Radiohead’s ‘alien’ approach creates an anthem for those feeling homesick despite not truly knowing where they came from, or where exactly they want to be;
“I wish that they’d swoop down in a country lane, late at night when I’m driving, take me on board their beautiful ship, show me the world as I’d love to see it.”
2. Dua Lipa ft. Chris Martin – Homesick
Dua Lipa and Coldplay frontman, Chris Martin’s collaborative track, Homesick, captures a melancholic wish to return back home with your lover.
Against an emotively sparse soundscape composed simply of a grand piano, Dua Lipa’s peaceful vocal highlights are backlit by deeply evocative lyrical imagery of romance and longing.
Each verse line harbours an odd, disorienting effect like the lingering feeling of homesickness entwining its dissociative nostalgia within every strand of thought;
“Here, where the sky’s falling, I’m covered in blue, I’m running and I’m crawling, fighting for you … When I’m walking on water, all my dreams have come true, still, nothing means nothing without you.”
3. Pennywise – Homesick
Pennywise craft their retro punk/metal track, Homesick, from a unique perspective, describing the perils of returning to your home city only to realise it’s been engulfed in violence, poverty and crime;
“I walk down my old street, used to be home for me and now there’s spray paint on the walls, I see a house that at one time looked nice, but now it is abandoned, there’s nothing left at all.”
Pennywise embed the phrase ‘homesickness’ to showcase not only the longing for the original city now decimated beyond return, but also using it a unique metaphor to expose the sick horror now reigning over the hometown;
“Homesickness is the flu that surrounds me, a virus spreading through the street, it astounds me, homesickness.”
Bearing a harmony centred in thrashing guitars, laden with the cut-throat, distorted attitude of a city ruined by violent crime, Homesick is an obscure anthem for anyone who’s stumbled upon a wasteland in the place of their old home town.
4. The Cure – Homesick
Hiding at the end of The Cure’s 1989 record Disintegration, Homesick is a 7-minute masterpiece blanketed with an enchanting, nostalgic atmosphere.
Devoting only a few minutes of its length to a picturesque lyrical display, Homesick layers its synthwave style with an array of instrumental melodies interweaving and building gradually like the slow-shattering feeling of homesickness.
A captivating bluesy piano crowns this track, waltzing behind the harmony like a flickering daydream of home.
The Cure twist the concept of homesickness entirely, their lyrics eloquently crafted to hold a polar opposite message than expected by the term.
This is a track about the sickness of returning to an empty home, preferring to stay in a lover’s arms forever; “Inspire in me the desire in me to never go home.”
5. Frank Sinatra – Homesick, That’s All
Frank Sinatra’s 1945 hit, Homesick, That’s All, is a vintage, string-clad pop track reminiscing on the pure, bright memories of childhood and growing up in the family home.
Between Christmas morning joy, schoolyard romances and chocolate sodas with whipped cream, Sinatra’s track is magnificently evocative of a faded era, making even the youngest listeners homesick for a way of life which isn’t even theirs.
Perhaps the most powerful lyric embellishing Sinatra’s dream-stained track is the line, “I miss the times I had to set the table, I miss the rolls my mother made when she was able,” showcasing the inherent heartbreak of homesickness through a breathtakingly despairing metaphor.
6. Donovan – Homesickness
Donovan’s 1971 track, Homesickness, is a colourful prog rock piece with an abundance of quirky, psychedelic inspirations adorning its groovy, retro beat.
Donovan centres his track in the growing feeling of homesickness after touring for months on end, his simple lyrics striking at the heart of his concept, “Homesickness, it’s driving me out of my mind, homesickness, tour-sick.”
The chorus’ lyrics are styled with an erratic, maddening vocal tone, like the slow descent into mild insanity after being on the road for far too long, uprooted from all sense of normality and things unknowingly depended upon to keep you grounded.
7. James Arthur – Quite Miss Home
James Arthur’s 2019 pop track Quite Miss Home illustrates the heartbreak of a man stranded from his wife whilst away on a business trip.
James Arthur draws in on the crushing moment you realise how much you miss even the worst and most banal sides of your relationship when you’re split apart;
“I really feel the distance, and I quite miss home, and I miss you telling me to leave my shoes at the door ’cause you just swept the floor and the dirt drives you crazy.”
Basing his contemporary track in a timeless composition of piano and strings, Arthur’s power ballad echoes the pure, immobilising emptiness of being isolated from your lover, underscored by the daydream of returning;
“Yeah, I quite miss home, ’cause it feels like poetry, when the rain falls down on the window, while you’re in my arms and we’re watching the TV.”